No Rest for the Weary

Before we had the boys, we slept in on Saturdays. We took naps in the afternoon. We were well-rested.

I have not had a fully restful sleep in over 5 years. It comes with the kids. I've gotten used to it, and being tired usually doesn't bother me much. Last night, however....I stayed up late because I had the bright idea to bake homemade cookies for the boys' teachers for end-of-the-year gifts. When I made this brilliant plan, I did not calculate how many cookies I would need. 3 kids, 2 teachers each---that's a lot of cookies. I started baking at 1:30 in the afternoon and Letterman had started his monologue before I was done. Turned out Hubby wasn't feeling well and there is a known stomach bug going around, so I opted to sleep on the sofa. THEN there was an especially-funny rerun of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on, and I just had to finish it. It was pretty late when I finally crashed. I had been asleep all of 20 minutes when Little Middle woke up crying. I got up, soothed him back to sleep, and returned to my sofa bed. I slept for maybe another hour, and I was awakened by a noise. It took me a minute, but there was no mistaking a middle-of-the-night chirping bird outside the window. I lay there for 10 more minutes willing it to be quiet, but no such luck. So, at 1:00 this morning, I was standing out in my front yard in my pjs armed with a golf ball out of the toy box. I listened, took aim, and threw that ball as hard as I could into the tree where the stupid bird was singing. It was pitch black outside and I couldn't see a thing, but it was very satisfying to hear that ball thunk each of the tree branches on its way down. I managed to find it in the yard and threw it one more time for good measure. It thunked down, rolled out into the street, and all was quiet. I went back and tucked myself in on my sofa and slept soundly until my alarm went off.

I am going to bed early tonight...hopefully the bird learned its lesson and will sing to someone else.